Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian & poet-novelist.- "Colour, creed, sex, sexuality... these are but part of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to emails. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Saturday, 1 February 2014

Tell-Tale Mind

How many
of us, I wonder, show ourselves to others as we really are rather than whom we
would like them to think we are? Many people seem to think I am a strong person
and very self-confident. Yet, nothing could be further than the truth. I
portray a fictionalized version of myself in which I believe, because I have
never quite managed to work out what it is about my real self that I can
believe in.

Sometimes,
when we are discussing mutual friends or colleagues with other friends and
colleagues, even members of our own family with other members of the family, we
are not infrequently surprised by what we hear and may even wonder if we are
talking about the same person. I guess we present a different persona to
different people. Yet, those personae are all the same person. So are we, I
wonder, all caught up in our own fictions?

I have
kept faith with my sexuality since I came out as an openly gay person many years
ago, and am certainly not ashamed of being gay. At the same time, all those
formative years of having to lie because being gay was a criminal offence have
left their mark. In those days, I had to create an alternative persona in order
to survive. On the one hand, there was the conscientious if not very bright
schoolboy; on the other, there was the shy, scared teenager struggling to come
to terms with an awakening sexuality and finding ways of satisfying it that
would have shocked just about everyone I knew. I’d cruise for sex and love-hate
every minute of it. I was like a good-bad character in a novel. My life, for
years was a split reality. Even now, years on, no one knows or will ever know
how much so or just how much of that split personality remains.

Oh, I am
no Jekyll and Hyde, but if someone were to ask, ‘Will therealRoger Taber stand up please,’
it would be a motley collection of characters that step out of the
storybook that is my life.

This poem
is a villanelle.

TELL-TALE
MIND

I’d show
the world what I would be

(as if
make-believe pays)

but the mind,
it tells tales on me

Terrified,
as I confront adversity,

a sailor
on angry waves,

I’d show
the world what I would be

‘Be
brave, go free,’ love told me,

quick to
learn its ways,

but the mind,
it tells tales on me

From
nature, I take my humanity

(lost in
a temporal maze);

I’d show
the world what I would be

I have
kept faith with my sexuality,

(mastering
its ways)

but the mind,
it tells tales on me

The heart,
it seeks refuge in poetry

(from its
nightmares);

I’d show
the world what I would be,

but the mind,
it tells tales on me

Copyright
R. N. Taber 2009; 2011

[Note:
Yes, I know I’ve been oversimplifying in my preamble and not saying anything
original, but readers often ask what lies behind a poem, what prompted me to
write it in the first place. Besides, I am writing a blog, not an essay on the
human psyche.]

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About Me

A gay man. Born in Gillingham, Kent (UK) Dec. 21st 1945. Graduated with BA Hons.(Class 2/1) in English & American Literature, the University of Kent in Canterbury, summer 1973.

Some 700+ poems have appeared in poetry publications worldwide since 1993, excluding any that only appear in my collections.

Better known as a poet, my first novel - 'Blasphemy' was published in the USA, October 2006 ; it is Book 1 of a planned trilogy and was also distributed in the UK & the rest of Europe. Book 2 - 'Sacrilege' -was self-published and only on sale in the UK or on the Internet. [Book 3 - 'Redemption' - has been delayed due to illness. (I have prostate cancer.) Other novels have not yet found an agent/ publisher but are serialised on my fiction site.